Senator Cynthia Villar on Monday blamed the Department of Agriculture for the “poor performance” of Filipino students and for failing to produce efficient and competitive farmers.
“Of course, because our dairy production is 1 percent of the demand. Ninety-nine percent are imported. This means that if a child is poor, he cannot drink milk since it is, of course, expensive and imported. You are a poor kid, can you buy imported? So that’s the problem,” said Villar in an interview after yesterday’s hearing on building gardens in public schools and urban gardening and vertical farming.
Because of this situation, she said most poor children cannot drink milk.
“If that’s the case, the development of their mental ability would be affected,” said Villar, chairman of the Senate committee on agriculture and food.
“What I’m saying, it is not only the Department of Education [DepEd] who should be blamed but our inability to provide good nutrition to our children,” she said.
She particularly took to task the government’s dairy program for the poor students who do not perform well in school.
She pointed out that the Philippine Carabao Center and the National Dairy Authority, which have been operating for 26 years, have no clear programs.
Due to the absence of cheap milk, poor students can no longer afford to drink that resulted to their poor performance in their classes.
“It’s typical that children should be allowed to drink milk to improve their mental ability. If dairy production is small, children will no longer drink milk. More or less, the development of their mental ability is affected,” she said.
She said the PCC has also been allocating funds for the procurement of new vehicles instead of using them for dairy programs.
During the public hearing, Villar also said our students was adjudged second to the last in terms of performance in reading comprehension.
The Philippines performed the poorest out of 79 countries in a reading literacy assessment conducted by the inter-government group Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The OECD administered a two-hour Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam to 600,000 15-year-old students around the world in 2018.
She scored the “bad performance” of the Department of Agriculture (DA) also for failing to come up with programs that would make our farmers efficient and competitive and
“You have many overhead, but no programs. Fifty percent, mostly overhead, PS (personal services) and research….(You) have been accustomed to overhead. So if you would suggest and office for the national government… you just suggest program for the people,” she said.
While the agriculture department has been spending on research, Villar, however, said this is not being used.
“There should be an application. Why do we do research if it will not be applied to our daily lives?” she said, adding that these should also be taught to farmers.
If there are no programs to benefit the farmers, she said their lives would not improve.
“Like research without application, how can that improve the lives of farmers if there is no application research.”
She said the Philippines also has been lagging behind in food production.
“We are behind Vietnam in rice production, Thailand in sugar, dairy (products) in India, Indonesia in coconut,” she said.
She said the country is competitive only in banana and pineapple production because they are being produced by the private sector.
Villar has been pushing for instructional gardens in all elementary and secondary, both public and private, as an effective tool for hunger mitigation.
According to the senator, she wants to replicate the “Gulayan sa Paaralan” established in 2007 to inculcate in the young minds of students the science of planting and its health benefits. This would also encourage them to engage in farming later.
Villar also tackled the measures of Senators Francis Pangilinan and Grace Poe on urban agriculture and vertical farming.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has approved a P24-billion loan for the Department of Agrarian Reform’s support to parcelization of the land individual title (SPLIT) that shall divide collective certificates of land ownership award (CCLOAs) into individual titles, according to Secretary John Castriciones.
He said the individualization of land tiles is set to begin “soon.”
The World Bank’s approved loan package amounts to P24 billion, which is P3 billion short of the P27-billion original proposal of the Department of Agrarian Reform.
Castriciones said the SPLIT program seeks to subdivide CCLOAs into individual land titles so that every farmer-beneficiary may exercise full ownership and possession, and have a complete say in cultivating it the way he or she sees fit.
He said the issuance of CCLOAs has repercussions to the government as it could not collect taxes and amortization.
“All these issues can be cured once these CCLOAs are split into individual titles,” he added.
He said one of his priorities is the program’s implementation in the procurement for every province of the survey and other related equipment to identify, and delineate exact boundaries of each farm lot, four-wheel-drive vehicles and motorcycles for better mobility of DAR survey teams, and the hiring of additional manpower.
Undersecretary for Foreign-Assisted and Special Projects Office Bernie Cruz said the issuance of CCLOAs has been the common practice in the past years because of time constraints and intense pressure exerted by peasant and peasant-based non-government organizations.
“We wanted to change the situation by reducing these CCLOAs into individual titles so that each farmer may enjoy a sense of security as he or she can identify exactly which farm lot is his or hers and where it is exactly located,” he said.
“Only then does he or she will be encouraged to work harder and invest more on the farm for greater productivity,” he added.